Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Koch vs. Cato in fourteen words

Love of liberty should not imply a firm belief about the spectrum of CO2
Explained at Noahopinion, how libertarians have been funded and manipulated by authoritarian rent seekers and how "only at the end do they understand". The climate issue is just a by blow.

11 comments:

Brian said...

To alter Sinclair a bit, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his ideology is comforted by his not understanding it."

Climate change is inconvenient to libertarians because it requires some level of government intervention, and to conservatives because they have to admit that American and the West are not blameless in the world. Rent seekers find it inconvenient for the reasons in Sinclair's original quote, and more broadly because they don't want government to solve problems except in narrowly targeted areas they favor.

Teasing out which motivation is the primary driver of climate denialism is a matter of opinion.

I consider myself somewhat libertarian, but the blinders in that movement are pretty huge.

Somewhat related: renewable energy businesses are playing the political game too, and locating their political interest with the Democrats. That's going to have some impacts that bear watching.

Anonymous said...

Carbonairianism:

"Give me carbon dioxide or give me death" -- Paddiwack Henergy

~@:>

Anonymous said...

Carbonaryanism?

John Mashey said...

Love of liberty should not imply a firm belief in the rights of tobacco companies to kill children slowly.

See Fake science, pp.39-41.
CATO was #2 in Philip Morris funding, well ahead of Heartland.

Anonymous said...

Give me carbon dioxide or give me death

Please allow me to escort you to the hatch in my spacecraft.

Anonymous said...

"MAryandayn"
-- by Horatio Algeranon

Ayn Rand was a Libertarian
And some might say an Aryan
But certainly not a libraryan
With the name of Madam Maryan

She may have looked the part
But wasn't near as smart
For Maryan read Sarte
A Marxist at the heart.

Rand,Ayn thought Marx was crass
For talking about class
And giving folks a pass
Who couldn't pay for gas.


~@:>
Yes, Horatio knows it is not pronounced "Sart", but he has a poetic license (and is not afraid to use it) and besides, that's how most will read it.

Anonymous said...

Ooops, should be spelled "Sartre"
~@:>

J Bowers said...

OT, but Eli should find what Michael just said to Roger quite entertaining.

Anonymous said...

Well color me stoopid.

This would imply the cult of 'Libertarians' have been literally brainwashed and turned into mindless robot zombies.

In effect, a cancer on the very soul of the nation, that will destroy the country from within, if left unchecked.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing" ...... Edmund Burke

cui bono

Anonymous said...

SnowBunny says:

I thought libertarianism would die with Lyndon LaRouche's imprisonment. Ilacked knowledge of the forces behind it.
Being in NH, one runs into libertarians frequently. Some are smart people. Some have moved here; rumor has it some have come with no visible means of support.The state was selected by libertarians as the easiest for a libertarian takeover.
My first encounter with libertarians has left me thoroughly hostile. I was changing planes in Dallas airport when I browsed at a table promoting hydrogen fusion. I was curious enough to by a glossy magazine, well written, to take on the next plane. I gave $3 in one dollar bills and was told I could pay it on credit. I handed the guy the cash but he persisted, to the point I got bad vibes. The libertarians took credit numbers and abused them, which is why LaRouche went to jail. With the magazine, the guy handed me a "newspaper", a LaRouche cheesy screed. I can't see why an sensible person related to his trash.
The people who go in for libertarianism are in favor of individual freedom and hostile to government. They do not see that the people that fund the movement are hostile to government and want their freedom, but nobody else's.
I doubt this 'takeover' suit -- after all the Koches majorly funded Cato -- will discourage those who don't understand that only funding government for police and military is authoritarianism.

Brian said...

I'm very unsympathetic to what I call simplistic libertarianism, as opposed to the freedom-maximizing libertarian viewpoint.

That said, conflating even rightwing libertarians with LaRouche is like describing the political left as dominated by Jeremiah Wright and Ward Churchill. It doesn't get you anywhere.